Data Science – Things You Should Know

October 4, 2017

Data or Big Data is the new buzz word. No matter where you are from, across all lines of work, you cannot deny coming across Data Science. You might not understand data science and all that comes along with it, but you cannot deny that the impact of Data Science is enormous, and it mostly changes things around it for good.

Where is this data coming from and why now?

Now a day’s over six billion devices are connected to the internet, all the applications and devices that are connected have users and their movement on the internet generates data, it is estimated more than 2.5 million terabytes of data is created in almost 24 hours. That is humongous!! And as technology keeps getting added into our daily lives, these volumes are going to increase exponentially.

This is the fascinating piece of information, especially if you are from the field of IT. More so because recently there have been massive layoff drives in India within the tech companies. Like the law of nature goes, it is time for IT professionals to evolve or perish, and what better time than now to dive into the world of data science.

So if Data Science is of interest to you, or for a quick understanding of the subject, read along.

Data Science is coined as the ‘Sexist job of the 21st century’ by the Harvard Business Review. Since there are such huge volumes of data that is created on a daily basis, you need the skills from the data science field to get insights from this information and set things on track.

Data science is used to Optimize Performance. So if you use the GPS or make online purchases, do you notice how the next time you try to move online, you see the internet throwing the right recommendations? The data that you are generating online come back to you as optimized performance, due to data science insights.

If you wish to progress in this field, there are certain skill sets you would need, like Statistics, Knowledge in Data Science Tools, a Business Acumen, excellent Communication Skills, Inquisitive and Analytical Mindset, skills to successfully work on data, ability to find patterns and extract information.

Good news is that you don’t necessarily need to have a degree like a PH. D, however certification in the fundamentals of analytics along with the required technical skills should be a good starting point.

Since Data Science is a vast landscape, possessing all working knowledge about it is not possible, knowledge in globally recognised technologies like SAS, R, Python, SQL Database and Hadoop will make it easier for you to make a switch or enter the field of data science.

Descriptive Analytics – as the name suggests, is describing the pieces of information that are uncovered from the data pool, for E.g. while analysing how many people are interested in pursuing a career in data science, descriptive analysis would say 35% people from IT, 27% graduates from Statistics etc.., are interested.

Predictive Analytics – again as the name suggests, forecasting about the events that could happen based on historical data. So essentially with predictive analysis, one could estimate how many people from IT will enter the field, by studying the past turnout.

Machine Learning is another upcoming vertical in data science, to simply put it, it’s the ability of machines to learn with minimal programming efforts by the method of algorithms.

Internet Of Things (IoT) is another technology which is contributing significantly to the field of data science. It is basically an ecosystem of devices which are connected with each other via the internet. IOT is all about data generation and data science is all about data analysis.

Learning data science is not sufficient but you also have to practice it. Look for courses that offer case studies and projects with real-time data sets to work on. You will need this upper edge to have a rewarding career in data science.